Air control service improvements over Europe to receive EU support

The EU's TEN-T Programme will invest almost €2 million in studies towards common European support services for air traffic management with the aim to improve their performance.

The studies will examine the feasibility for the development and operations of several common European support services to bring together a wide range of currently dispersed services. These include such activities as flight planning, radio frequency management, aircraft tracking, and data communication.

The project is part of a larger action preparing the regulatory and development aspects of the Single European Sky initiative (SES), which aims to increase Europe's airspace capacity, reduce the risk of accidents and the environmental impact of flights and cut the costs for passengers. It may contribute to the deployment of SESAR, the EU's research programme for the modernisation of European air traffic management.

The project was selected for EU funding with the assistance of external experts under the TEN-T Multi-Annual Call 2013, priority 'Air Traffic Management'. Its implementation will be monitored by INEA, the European Commission's Innovation and Networks Executive Agency.